A brief note at the end of an exceptionally light week of blogging from yours truly: For once I peel open the readings list from the Chicago Reader and not find I have a dozen events to track down. But check out their list anyway, since they cover lots of appearances I don’t (such as mystery writers, government figures, and the publishers).

And, if you’re not going away for the holiday, don’t forget to listen to Hello Beautiful!, the Sunday morning arts show at 10am on WBEZ Chicago Public Radio this weekend, which will feature Judith Valente’s beautiful profile of local poet Lisel Mueller, with readings by the poet.

Note to self: reserve judgment on event programs until said programs are final.

The full program for this year’s Printer’s Row Book Fair is now available. I spent a half-hour this morning adding the names to my events list and only got to the “Gs.” Let that be a lesson to me.

ADDITION 5/26: All the literary events at PRBF are now on my list. Seventy-some authors over two days, if you can believe it.

GRJ’s industrious readers have already been searching the site endlessly for news of Bloomsday Chicago 2004, so I must accommodate. Following is the list I’ve compiled so far. I’ll update as necessary as the day approaches.

Wednesday, June 2 through Sunday, June 27
A Dublin Bloom, Dermot Bolger’s stage adaptation of Joyce’s Ulysses. (IRT)

Saturday, June 5
“Bloom Bash,” the opening night party for A Dublin Bloom. (IRT)

Friday, June 11, through Wednesday, June 16
Photo exhibit of Joycean Dublin. (IAHC)

Friday, June 11
“The Music of Joyce,” a live performance of music selections associated with the works of James Joyce interspersed with associated readings. (IAHC)

Saturday, June 12
The Joycean Symposium will feature scholars Dr. Philip Kenny, who will discuss “Building with Words: the Architecture of Joyce’s Ulysses,” and Claudia Traudt, who will present “Horse Piss and
Rotted Straw: the Splendor of Truth in James Joyce.” (IAHC)

“Rattlin’ of the Joists,” theatrical presentations from the life and work of James Joyce. (IAHC)

Sunday, June 13
“A Bus Tour of Joycean Chicago,” which transfers the epic journey of Leopold Bloom, as depicted in Ulysses, from 1904 Dublin to 2004 Chicago. (IAHC)

Joyce and Molly look-a-like contest. (IAHC)

Tuesday, June 15
“Bloomsday Eve,” a free cocktail reception celebrating the most famous day in contemporary art and literature, with the cast of A Dublin Bloom. (IRT)

Wednesday, June 16
American premiere of Dubliner Sean Walsh’s film bl,.m, starring Academy Award-nominated actor Stephen Rea
as Leopold Bloom, Angeline Ball as Molly Bloom, and
Hugh O’Conor as Stephen Dedalus. (IAHC)

Bloomsday Dinner/Show Package at The Galway Arms, with a special Ulysses-inspired menu served by waitstaff in 1904 period costume followed by the Bloomsday performance of A Dublin Bloom. (IRT)

Yes, as Maud notes, this is funny. Very funny. But for “funniest in months,” my vote goes to David Owen’s “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Ex-Wife,” from back in January. Here’s rule no. 3:

The oil in the Saturn wagon gets changed every three thousand miles — not five thousand miles, not seven thousand miles, not ten thousand miles — and I don’t care what she or the owner’s manual or the guy in the service department or the Internet says. Three. Thousand. God. Damned. Miles.

I’ve always been a fan of the MacArthur “genius” grants, which over the years have supported writers as diverse as John Ashbery, Harold Bloom, Joseph Brodsky, William Gaddis, Ernest J. Gaines, Irving Howe, Charles Johnson, Thomas Pynchon, William Kennedy, Derek Walcott, Robert Penn Warren, and John Edgar Wideman, not to mention countless scientists, philosophers, and other bright folks. It was therefore with some dismay that I read Cheryl L. Reid’s piece on the foundation in Sunday’s Sun-Times, “City’s top charity pampers its own.”

Here’s one fact Reid uncovers: based on 2002 data, while the foundation distributes $1.4 million annually for its best-known program, the genius grants, it spends $77 million annually in operating and administrative expenses. According to Reid, the foundation ranks first out of the nation’s top 10 charitable foundations in its ratio of expenses to payout.

In responding to questions, foundation board members and staff demonstrate that they have a kind of genius of their own — a genius for obliviousness:

Board members, though, don’t seem to have a problem with the expense afforded them. Last November, in a Sun-Times interview, board Chair Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, a renowned Harvard education professor, described her luxurious Four Seasons room on North Michigan Avenue as her “home away from home.”

Critics say glitzy rooms at the Four Seasons hardly seem appropriate for tax-exempt, nonprofit personnel. Corporate rates start at $385 a night for single occupancy and go to $570, the hotel reported.

When asked why the foundation felt it necessary to incur those kinds of expenses, spokesman Boyer replied, “It’s a fine Chicago hotel. It’s a great place to stay.”

Stephen Mitchelmore offers some observations on the recently discovered Kingsley Amis poem which appeared in last week’s TLS. Steve notes that, while others have linked the poem to “Aubade” by Amis pal Philip Larkin, he recalled Larkin’s “Love Again.”

Reading Amis’s poem, I was reminded of yet a third Larkin work, “Toads Revisited” (1962), which like Amis’s features a turn round the garden and work, never mind what.

Perhaps this is another case of that cryptomnesia we’ve been hearing so much about lately. Speaking of which, do you suppose it’s related to that other ailment occasionally associated with literary figures, cryptonazia?

“The Young Author” (1743), from Samuel Johnson: The Complete English Poems:

When first the peasant, long inclin’d to roam,
Forsakes his rural seats and peaceful home,
Charm’d with the scene the smiling ocean yields,
He scorns the flow’ry vales and verdant fields;
Jocund he dances o’er the watery way,
While the breeze whispers, and the streamers play.
Joys insincere! thick clouds invade the skies,
Loud roars the tempest, high the billows rise;
Sick’ning with fear he longs to view the shore,
And vows to trust the faithless deep no more.
     So the young author panting for a name,
And fir’d with pleasing hope of endless fame,
Intrusts his happiness to human kind,
More false, more cruel than the seas and wind.
“Toil on, dull croud, in extacy” he cries,
“For wealth or title, perishable prize;
While I those transitory blessings scorn,
Secure of praise from ages yet unborn.”
This thought once form’d, all council comes too late,
He plies the press, and hurries on his fate;
Swiftly he sees the imagin’d laurels spread,
And feels the unfading wreath surround his head.
Warn’d by another’s fate, vain youth be wise,
Those dreams were Settle’s once, and Ogilby’s.
     The pamphlet spreads, incessant hisses rise,
To some retreat, the baffled writer flies;
Where no sour criticks snarl, nor sneers molest,
Safe from the keen lampoon and stinging jest;
There begs of heaven a less distinguish’d lot,
Glad to be hid, and proud to be forgot.

Everybody wants something from you, including your baby pictures. (Just send them to Stephany already, will you?) Here are three things I want, and then I promise to leave you alone:

* Talking Books with Mara Tapp. Regrettably, I missed Sunday’s debut on WFMT. Anybody hear it, and if so, how was it? If there’s an archive, I haven’t been able to find it.

* Literary sites in Japan, particularly in Tokyo. I’m visiting in September and want to do a little literary touring, as is my wont. Any sites I should see? They don’t need to be tarted up or even open to visitors; I don’t mind just walking by. I’ll post a list when I’m done gathering.

* Apologies to the Iroquois. If you borrowed it, I’d like it back.

Thanks for your attention.

From Kingsley Amis, Memoirs (1991):

In ‘46 when I was twenty-four
I met someone harmless, someone defenceless,
But til then whole, unadapted within;
Awkward, gentle, healthy, straight-backed,
Who spoke to say something, laughed when amused;
If things went wrong, feared she might be at fault,
Whose eye I could have met for ever then,
Oh yes, and who was also beautiful.
Well, that was much as women were meant to be,
I thought, and set about looking further.
How can we tell, with nothing to compare?

A few items that caught my attention lately:

* Jessa points out that Neil Jordan has a novel coming out, called Shade. I was surprised to learn, from a review in the Independent, that Jordan has written three previous novels. The only thing I’ve read is the story collection, A Night in Tunisia. Pretty damn good, I thought.

* I could spend all my time online commenting on Dan Green’s blog posts. Must find time to go back and defend Bellow, decry both the Gioians and the Sillimanites, and discern that solitary shred of sense that might be present under certain conditions in Watman on Dybek.

* Mark at The Elegant Variation gives us his interview with Andrew Sean Greer. I loved the same comment Ron highlighted, and I also liked the brief discussion of literary blogs:

TEV: Were you aware of them before I�d written to you? And do you read them now? To what extent do you check in?

ASG: I was aware of them. Yeah. I�m a little scared of them. I was aware when I was searching for myself. On Google. Which I try not to do because really I shouldn�t do that stuff. It has nothing to do with me. But I was googling myself and I came across the blogs, but I was already very aware of political blogs, which are amazing. It�s like the only way I can find political information. And then I started to find that was true about literary blog, and that they weren�t gossip, and they weren�t really rants or screeds. They were someone�s personal response to a literary world. So it was the writers they were interested in, not necessarily celebrities.